


The Tree House

by walkthroughhale



Category: Teen Wolf (TV), Teen Wolf (TV) RPF
Genre: Chris Argent - Freeform, God - Freeform, Hale House Fire, Laura Hale - Freeform, Other, tree house
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-12
Updated: 2013-06-20
Packaged: 2017-11-16 03:18:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/534895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/walkthroughhale/pseuds/walkthroughhale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek Hale has a secret, something he’s never told anyone. Shortly after his family was murdered, he’d sneak into the woods when his sister was asleep, deep down into the depths that people didn't often venture into, and built a tree house. It took him almost a year to finish it, but he did. After that, it became his safe haven, his personal sanctuary away from the world. He’d go there to think, or get away, or anything at all when life got good, or bad, or anything in-between. He has a close connection to the place and has shared every moment with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A House is not a Home

**Author's Note:**

> #Please Note: This fan fic is not meant to be a long, drawn out story. It's flashback's of Derek's past, revolving around the Tree House. So each chapter will be a time jump, containing another flash back. <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #This is my first attempt at a fan fic, so please excuse the first chapter. It took me a bit to really settle into the story.

It had been six years. Six long, torturous years since his family was murdered. Since everything he ever knew and loved was taken away from him. Derek was lost, confused and so cold inside. He’d grown numb, void of any kind of emotion. It was his only chance at getting through the pain of losing those he loved so much. He didn’t know what else to do. Every day had become mechanical, his actions had simply become motions he was going through each day because he had too, because his brain knew no other way.  
  
He’d finished building his tree house and though he still had a home, if you could call a burnt out shell of a house a home, Derek had spent most of his nights here. Laura had grown cold and hard, she too was simply going through the motions though she took a different view on how those motions should be gone through. Most of the time she was away, looking for others like them, desperately searching for some kind of clue as to who was behind the attack. All she wanted was revenge. She’d become Alpha now and Derek had no choice but to obey her. When she was out of town though? He could escape to his secret place, completely alone and without her.  
  
Only, it wasn’t like that anymore. As soon as he’d finished building the house, Laura told him they had to go. They had to leave town and it had to be that night. He was lost and confused but she was his sister, so he followed her. But now? Now, Laura was gone too. She promised she’d be back in a few weeks, which stretched into a little over a month. He couldn’t shake the fear that something had gone terribly wrong, so he went searching for her. What he found, or more so, what was left waiting for him, was something he would never get over. She was cut into pieces and left for him to find. The greatest Alpha he knew, next to his father, turned into bait to draw him back to town.  
  
Derek stayed in town after that. Vowing to never leave his home again. Overwhelmed by the pain, Derek mostly stayed hidden. Turned himself into a recluse, hiding away from a world that had done nothing but wrong by him. Today was different though. When you bottle up so much emotion for so long, eventually it needs to come out. Derek had been at breaking point for a while now, but today when some peasant thought he was smart enough to make a comment about the way his family died, Derek lost it. It took everything he had not to rip out the throat of Chris Argent on the spot. Instead, he turned and ran. Ran as far as he could. When he stopped, he ended up in front of his beloved tree house. Derek wasn’t sure how long he stood and stared, the sun was beginning to lower above him, but it was still bright as the middle of the day.  
  
Derek walked closer to the tree house, his heart pounding in his chest at the thought of what he was about to do. “God?” he called out hesitantly. He couldn’t believe he was about to pray to a God he didn’t even believe in. “Are you there?” His tone was a little more hopeful. “I don’t know if you can hear me or not, but I don’t know what else to do.” He paused, waiting for a sign, some kind of acknowledgement. “You have my family. You have my house. You have my soul. I don’t understand? What else do you want? What more can I possibly give you?” His hope turned to pain, turned to anger at a man that everyone always promised would be there for him, yet when he needed him the most? He got nothing. “Why did you take them? Why did you leave me alone in a world full of nothing but anguish? Why can’t you give them back?!” His voice rose over the last few words until it cracked, breaking from the pain.  
  
He felt the searing heat of un-shed tears burning behind his eyes. Furiously he blinked them back. His hopes fading, extinguished yet again by the cold that was buried inside him. “Forget it. I don’t want your damn help.” He muttered, dejected and hurt. Turning from the place he loved, the place he always went too for peace. The place that no longer felt like home, he walked away. Leaving any emotions he had behind …


	2. I Found You

Derek was sitting on the forest floor staring at her open, glazed over eyes. He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there like that. An hour? A day? A week? No, not a week, the sun had only risen and fallen twice. It didn’t matter, all that mattered was the pieces of her scattered across the woods he lived in. It was what brought him back to Beacon Hills. She’d gone missing two weeks ago though it had felt like a century since he heard her voice last. He remembered the voice message so clearly, “Hi Baby Bro. How are you? I hope you’re looking after yourself. I should be home in a few days, there’s nothing here, no new leads. Keep the doors locked till I get back. I love you.” He’d been playing it over and over until his phone died from being used so much whilst he was sitting next to the piece of her that had her head attached.

He’d taken up rocking on the spot, his body numb and void of emotion or feeling, both physical and emotional. Her head was resting in his lap and Derek was running his fingers through her long, black hair. “Shh..I got you, I got you baby.” He whispered over and over until his voice had grown hoarse and sound stopped coming out. It didn’t stop him from trying to comfort her but the cold, hard truth was that it was too late. He was too late. He never should have let her go on her own, if only he’d gone with her, been by her side. He could have stopped it, could have protected her.

It wasn’t until he’d cried all he could, and exhausted all of his senses that the resolve finally kicked in. A solemn, determined expression took over his features and he jumped up from the spot he’d been crouched in for two days straight. He’d taken his jacket off when he found her to keep her protected, not even in death should she be seen so vulnerable or exposed. Stretching out his taught, aching limbs he bent over and lifted the top half of her naked body up, ensuring he kept his leather jacket wrapped tightly around her petite half form. He held her as delicately as possible and began walking back to the house.

It didn’t take him long to get back, about half a day’s human pace. He placed her gently against the ground, near a large patch of dirt that was empty of any kind of life, floral or earthly. He grabbed a shovel he had propped up against the rear wall of the Hale House and began digging. The sun had long since disappeared when her grave was finally dug. His chest was heaving and his muscles were aching from the exertion but he pushed the thoughts aside as he gently laid out a woven blanket across the floor of the grave. Moving back over to where his sisters body lay, he picked her up and placed her neatly on top of the blanket. Derek took his time to arrange her hair so it flowed down her back and over her shoulders. He remembered his sister loving to have her hair out.

When he was satisfied with her positioning, that she was as comfortable as she possibly could be laid out beside those of his fallen family members before her, he began pushing the dirt back on top of her. Shovelling her grave closed. He moved fast with the wolfsbane, twirling it in a large spiral around the span of her fresh grave to protect her from any prying eyes. When he was satisfied he smoothed the dirt over the top and took a step back. Taking one last look at her, he turned in the opposite direction and walked deep into the woods. Far away from where he found the final piece of her.

When he arrived at his destination he felt a fresh wave of the pain he’d left behind here long ago roll over him again. “Good to see you too.” He grumbled at his tree house as he ran and jumped at the tree, scaling it in moments and lifting himself up through the manhole in the centre of the wooden floor. When he was back on two feet again he gazed out through one of the windows at the forest canopy, the green of the tree tops touching and mingling together, making it almost impossible to tell where one tree ended and the other began.

Derek reached inside his pocked and pulled out a silk tie. It was grey and black and as soft as clouds against his rough, calloused hands. He felt a stab of pain against his heart as he turned his sister’s tie around in his hands, feeling every inch of it, pretending it was still wrapped through her hair. It was the only thing left of her body and he took it as soon as he found it.

Looking up at the supporting beam that ran across the ceiling, Derek reached up and wove the tie around it, knotting it at its ends to keep it securely in place. When he was sure it would stay, he slumped to the floor and let the exhaustion take over, falling into a deep, dreamless sleep in the safety of his Tree House….


	3. The Loneliest Moon

The night had been intense, to say the least. Frankly, Derek didn’t really know how he got through it. His thoughts had been going wild. There were so many of them and they were running so fast across his mind that he couldn’t seem to grab onto a single one and make it coherent. One thing he knew for sure, though, was that he had failed. Failed his pack, failed his family and failed his friends. If he could really call them that. 

After everything was over Derek had found his way to the Tree House, somehow climbed up the limbs until he’d landed not so gracefully onto the hard wooden floor and remained there for the past few hours. His wounds had stopped bleeding, which was a good thing considering blood stains were a bitch to get out of wood, but he hadn’t bothered tending to them either.  


How could he have let that happen? It was his fault that the pack was lost, torn apart by a set of soulless, heartless alpha’s whose sole mission in life was to destroy his own. Which, Derek would normally have been fine with, considering he didn’t have a whole lot left to live for. Sure, he had a pack but it wasn’t like they were there for him, they were there purely because they were bound to him. So yeah, he would have been fine with it until they had taken his pack and used them against him. Whilst they didn’t care about him, he would give his life for them.  


And, oh yeah, there was his sister. His baby sister. The one who died along with everyone else in his family. How was Cora still alive? What was she doing with the Alpha pack? Where the hell had she been for the last 6 years? Derek was at a loss. For the first time in a long time he felt like that scared little boy that was all alone in the world. How did he let all of this happen?  


He tried moving, sliding painfully across the floor until he could find something to prop himself up against. A series of curses tumbling out of his mouth as he did so. One of the deeper cuts across his mid -section tore open in the process and he let out yet another foul curse. He felt guilty for not being with Boyd and Cora right now but they were passed out on the floor of the loft with Isaac, Scott, Peter & Stiles watching over them.  


Derek had just taken a scared, shaking teacher home and set her up with a cup of tea and a dose of bullshit and then ended up here. He needed to heal, needed to gather his thoughts. There was no way he could face his sister and his long-lost Beta in the condition he was in. It was surprising really, even to him, how after all these years a simple Tree House could bring him such solace in a time of raging horror. He knew he’d have to face the music later, but right now he planned on staying in his Tree House until his conscious gave out.


End file.
